Examples of a transmission device which builds a network include a synchronous optical network (SONET)-add drop multiplexer (ADM) transmission device, a packet transmission device, a wavelength division multiplex (WDM) transmission device, and the like. It is common that increase/decrease of the traffic volume is predicted and a band is allocated on the basis of the predicted increase/decrease of the traffic volume, in these transmission devices. On a network employing these transmission devices, when traffic exceeding prediction is generated, some terminals become to have difficulty in communication due to shortage of bands which are allocated to lines of the network. As a method for suppressing the number of terminals which have difficulty in communication, there is a method in which appropriate routing is performed on the basis of prediction of transition of the traffic.
For the prediction of transition of traffic, collected traffic data are accumulated and a periodic variation pattern of one year, one month, one day, or the like, a variation pattern in an occurrence of various types of events such as an earthquake and a concert, and the like may be used, for example. Transition of traffic is predicted by using these variation patterns so as to perform appropriate routing. Further, a variation pattern representing a long-term trend, a periodic variation pattern, and a variation pattern in an occurrence of an event may be combined with each other so as to generate and use a new traffic variation pattern.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-116648 is an example of related art.